Features¶

The Higher Education Package provides the following features.

General features¶

Accessibility: All features have been developed with accessibility in mind, that includes color contrasts, keyboard navigation, HTML validation, aria roles and alternative texts.
Privacy: Alle features have been developed with the visitors privacy in mind. That includes not loading any files from third-party-servers and deleting personal data if not needed anymore.
Speaking URLs: URLs are “speaking” (human-readable). This feature is based on the routing feature introduced in TYPO3 version 9.
Feature Toggls: The features of the Higher Education Package can be enabled or disabled using a feature toggl. In case you do not need a certain feature, you can completely disable it, no code or template will then be loaded.

Common content elements and page layouts¶

Default styles: The package comes with default styles which can be customized.
Page templates: A page template (based on TYPO3 backend layouts) with several editable areas is available to the editors. A special “footer” template allows editors to edit the website footers.
Main navigation: A main navigation is available which shows pages of the first and second level.
Breadcrumb navigation: A breadcrumb navigation (“You are here …”) shows the the visitor where the current page is paces in the site hierarchy.
Common content elements: Common types of content elements can be used by editors: header, text, text with image, images, table, video, menu, HTML.

Special content elements¶

On-page menu content elements: Different types of on-page menu elements can be used by editors (eg. list of subpages, list of selected pages, list of pages of a certain category).
Forms: Information can be collected using forms. This feature is based on the TYPO3 form framework.
Maps: Maps from OpenStreetMaps or Google Maps can be included. The privacy of visitors is respected by not including external code until the visitor clicks on the map (“two-click-solution”).
Icon container: Using the “icon container” content element, icons of social media websits or third-party applications (eg. campus management systems) can be placed onto the website and can be linked to the corresponding URLs.

Media management¶

Required alternative text: Alternative texts for images can made required in order to make sure every image contains an alternative text. No image without an alternative text can then be used in the frontend. This feature may be enabled or disabled with a feature toggl.

News and Events¶

News: The well known extension “news” is supported, that means templates are provided which fit nicely into the higher education package frontend.
Events: Events including date, location and organizer can be managed. This feature is based on news and the “eventnews” extension.

Person Database¶

Person database: Person records can be edited in the backend and are displayed in a searchable list. That list can be filtered by categories in the backend (eg. “Show all professors”).
Contact boxes: Contact information of single persons can be placed on pages (like “business cards”) in order to show contact persons for a certain area.
Person single view: A more detailed single view can be used to show more information about persons.

Courses¶

Courses Overview: A filterable list of courses is available and leads to course description pages. That feature is based on the extension “ke_search”.

Departments (Microsites/Faculties/Institutes)¶

A university contains different sub organizations, eg. institutes. These sub organizations can customize their apperance in the web. This feature can also be used to create microsites eg. for projects.

Custom logo: Organizations can define their own logo using constants, so no developers work is needed.
Custom colors: Organizations can define their own custom colors using constants, so no developers work is needed.
Custom footer: Organizations can define their own footer using constants, so no developers work is needed.
Custom navigation: Organizations can define their own navigation using constants, so no developers work is needed.

Department kickstarter¶

Using the department kickstarter, new department sites or microsites can be created easily with a dedicated module.

Define department site templates: Page trees can be marked as “department site templates”. Those page trees will be copied when a new department is created.
Slugs auto-created: The slug (URL Path) of the start page can be defined individually and for all subpages the slugs will be created accordingly.
Custom colors: Colors for the department can be selected while creating it. They will be saved as constants in a typoscript template.

For more information including screenshots see Department Kickstarter.

Search¶

A search function allows to search the website in the frontend. There are two different search solutions supported: Solr and ke_search.

Solr: The Solr search function is based on the TYPO3 extension “solr”. You will need to include that extension in your site package. Additionally you’ll need a running Solr server. This could be on your production server, eg. as a docker container or a third-party-hosted solution.
ke_search: The ke_search extension does not need an external server and is therefore easier to set up. Although not as powerful as solr, it features facetting. You can find more information at https://docs.typo3.org/typo3cms/extensions/ke_search/.

Working with languages¶

The package makes use of the great multi language possibilities of TYPO3

Language selector: A language selector is included in the frontend which automatically shows all available languages of that page.

Single-Sign-On¶

LDAP Login: Members of the university can use their existing LDAP account to log in into the website (both frontend and backend). That feature is based on the extension “ig_ldap_sso_auth”.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)¶

SEO meta tags: The Higher Education Package makes use of the “seo” extension introduced with TYPO3 version 9 which allows to set meta tags for search engines.
XML sitemap: A xml sitemap can be generated using the “seo” extension.

Documentation and developer support¶

Documentation: A documentation for editors, administrators and developers shows how to use, configure and extend the Higher Education Package.
Living Styleguide: A living styleguide helps developers to find out which styles to use in their templates.
Build-in SCSS parser: A built-in SCSS parser allows to easily include custom styles (CSS and Grid System).
Custom scss variables: A file containing custom SCSS variables can be included which overwrite default variables. This makes it easy to cusomize the SCSS variables.
Custom templates: All templates are based on Fluid and can be customized by overwriting them. The paths to the templates are included in the documentation for developers.

Demo website¶

The website https://edu-package.typo3.com/ shows the possibilities of the higher education package.